Barcelona terrorism case highlights new challenge

The alert came from an informant who warned of impending suicide attacks on the Barcelona subway.

And because the suspected bombers thought the spy was ready to die with them, officials say, he urged authorities to act fast. The paramilitary Guardia Civil raided mosques and apartments in port neighborhoods housing one of mainland Europe’s largest Pakistani communities. A judge jailed 10 suspects. Spain warned that bombers had been dispatched for follow-up attacks in Paris, London, Lisbon and Frankfurt.

More than two weeks later, however, the story seems ambiguous. Investigators found only a trace of explosives. No plot was detected in France, and no arrests have been made in any of the other countries. Leaders of the Pakistani community in Barcelona say they were unfairly targeted.

Some Western investigators believe the alleged plot was one of the most serious threats in Spain since the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004. Others, including some Spanish anti-terrorism officials, doubt that an attack was imminent.

But they all agree that the case illustrates a shift in the landscape -- and they are struggling to adjust.

For years, Al Qaeda leaders based in Pakistan almost exclusively targeted Britain, using radicals among the more than 1 million residents of South Asian descent. Those networks have showed greater ability and determination to strike the West than the North African or Middle Eastern groups that have been the main threat to continental Europe.

During the last six months, however, Danish, German and now Spanish authorities have broken up alleged plots linked to the Waziristan region of Pakistan, where investigators have detected an increase in Western recruits at clandestine training compounds. The cases suggest that Al Qaeda and its allies are trying to recruit within a rapidly growing Pakistani immigrant population in continental Europe.

As Britain has toughened border controls, more South Asian immigrants have headed elsewhere in Europe seeking economic opportunity and respite from turmoil at home. Some have arrived legally, but others travel along smuggling routes through the Middle East and Africa.

Although extremists remain a small minority, the presence of militant cells has increased along with the population, anti-terrorism officials say.

Al Qaeda strategists want to tap into smaller Pakistani immigrant communities as they have recruited in Britain in the past, said Sajjan Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security think tank in London. “It fits into the whole pattern. And they know they are not being monitored as much in other countries.”

Investigators who have developed language skills and informants to monitor North Africans and Arabs lack expertise with the Pakistani community. Police admit that this raises the risk of missing threats -- or exaggerating them.

In France, the Pakistani population has doubled in a decade and is now between 50,000 and 60,000, French officials say. The fast-growing community in Spain numbers about 60,000.

Pakistanis in Spain have settled mostly in Barcelona, drawn by its industry and entrepreneurial tradition. Mosques and shops line the narrow medieval streets of the Raval, a gentrifying former red-light district near the Ramblas promenade.

Pakistani-owned general stores are called “Badulaques,” the Spanish name for the Kwik-E-Mart run by Apu on “The Simpsons,” though that character is actually Indian.

As president of an alliance of 25 immigrant associations, Saqib Tahir led a campaign to open a Pakistani consulate in Barcelona. He operates a construction consulting firm on the elegant Paseo de Gracia, an address that exudes success.

“I don’t think there is any European city outside Britain with so many Pakistanis,” said Tahir, 35. “I have been a Spanish citizen since 1992. We have been content here.”

Community leaders complain that the raids were a result of faulty intelligence and cultural ignorance. Tahir knows the two alleged leaders of the group and believes they are innocent.

“We go to work and people think we might be a terrorist,” Tahir said. “On the subway, they look at us like we are suspicious.”

Anti-terrorism officials say there is something to worry about.

“On the intercepts of mosques in Barcelona, you hear bloodcurdling sermons” full of anti-Western rhetoric and praise of Al Qaeda, a Spanish anti-terrorism official said. “There are people who have trained in the [terror] camps. But that’s not a crime in itself.

“You can recruit informants, but it’s very tribal and vertical and closed,” the Spanish official added. “It is hard to work the informants deep into the network because it has filters. At the higher levels, they only deal with very trusted people.”

The spy in Barcelona traveled in Europe and Pakistan for France’s domestic and foreign intelligence services, and also worked for Spain’s spy agency, officials say. Tahir said two suspects who were detained and released describe the informant as a Pakistani immigrant.

Between late October and early January, he helped track three men suspected of training in Waziristan who traveled to Spain via Stockholm, Frankfurt and Portugal, investigators say. The French alerted the Spanish spy agency, according to a French intelligence official.

“We knew these individuals were arriving and we suggested that they be investigated,” the French official said.

The three are Mohammed Shoaib, 25; Mehmood Khalid, 28; and Imran Cheema, age undisclosed, all recent arrivals accused by the Spanish judge of planning a suicide attack on the weekend of their arrest.

“This pattern is common in Islamic extremist organizations, which in order to carry out a terrorist attack deploy suicide attackers shortly before executing it,” Judge Ismael Moreno wrote in the preliminary indictment Jan. 23.

Moreno described Maroof Ahmed Mirza, 37, imam at a Raval mosque, and Mohammed Ayoub, 63, a baker, as the cell’s ideologues and Hafeez Ahmed, 40, as an explosives expert who had just returned from five months in Pakistan.

The spy told investigators he was summoned to Barcelona by the network and discovered a plot in high gear. Some of the suspects regarded him as a graduate of a Pakistani training camp who was prepared to commit a suicide bombing, investigators say.

Pakistani community leaders think the informant framed the group to win favor with his handlers. Tahir says the suspects are peaceful members of the Tablighi Jamaat, a sect dedicated to itinerant preaching. The Tablighi Jamaat publicly rejects violence, though it has been linked to a number of alleged plots.

In later testimony, portions of which were published by El Pais newspaper and confirmed by anti-terrorism officials, the spy said the group talked about bombing subways, dispatched operatives to other cities, and engaged in “martyrdom” prayers. At the home of Ahmed, the alleged explosives expert, the spy said he saw furtive activity with suspicious materials. A suspect allowed him to call his family, then told him he would never talk to them again, according to the El Pais account and investigators.

Suspects alluded to Baitullah Mahsud, a Waziristan warlord allied with Al Qaeda and accused by the Pakistani government of orchestrating the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December, as the mastermind of the plot, according to the spy’s account.

Mahsud has followers in Europe, the Spanish anti-terrorism official said. But he and others question whether the warlord has the expertise to plot attacks in the West.

Because of the fear of imminent bloodshed, Spanish agents had little time to gather corroborating evidence, investigators say. To the dismay of French intelligence officials, a prized informant was exposed as a result. A Western anti-terrorism official said the threat was serious but acknowledged the gaps in the case.

“It all comes down to the credibility of the source,” the official said.

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rotella@latimes.com